On the Radar: Another Alias – Brain Exchange EP

Another Alias is back with four impressive tracks that span multiple electronic genres. The Waveform Transmitter’s Niall Johnston has plenty to say about it, which can only be a great thing!

Another Alias is back with four impressive tracks that span multiple electronic genres. The Waveform Transmitter’s Niall Johnston has plenty to say about it, which can only be a great thing!

Another Alias – as you may have guessed from the moniker – is the name of a longstanding artist who has embarked on a new style and approach to their work. The identity behind the mask (no parallels with the EP artwork intended) is Dermot Bateman, an Irish, Dublin-based producer with over ten years experience in electronic music.

Bateman has launched his own label – Whites of My Eyes – this year, whose first release was one of his own solo ventures. We have it on good authority that there are several others in the pipeline.

However, for his latest outing he has taken to the don’t imprint, established in 2000, which counts Neil Landstrumm and Jerome Hill in their back catalogue. With only three or four releases per year, a don’t record has to be special and in their own words “its aim is for our tracks to stand out in a set”.

The Brain Exchange EP certainly has the ability to do this, serving up four interesting, unrelenting techno movers.

The EP is made for the dark environments of the club, warehouse, or basement. It is within these confines that identity’s can be concealed and bodies are lost to the repetitive percussions of machine and drum. This hypnotic quality is found in opening track Blind Spot, with a blunt bass that chugs throughout as intermittent loops of synthetic chord swirls. An increasingly frantic atmosphere is built across the track, and is continued into the next.

Odd Future – our favourite – fires from the off, with kick-drums taking a bolder, more prominent position than in the previous track. Distorted squelches accompany the kick-drums and together they drive the sound forward. As it reaches the mid-point drums fall away and a droning tension rises. This eerie beat-less section is eventually broken by a sudden and piercing release of kicks, off-beat drums and swirling synths.

Compared to the A-side, the flip offers two tracks of more irregularity, with unconventional drum patterns and syncopation. The eeriness described in the first two tracks can still be felt on the flip, meaning the EP pleasingly has a theme that runs throughout.

The drums in Maylay and Mindwipe shift, whilst subtle, drawn-out strings rise and fall throughout. Where the A-side has a feeling of forward motion, the B-side feels as if it the direction ducks and dives, shifts and slides.

A mixture of punishing industrial motion, atmospheric cords, and irregular squelching synths makes this a record that fits into a contemporary release category, but has made interesting use of influences from other times, and other genres of music. This is credit to the time and expertise that Dermot Bateman has gained in electronic music over the years. His foray into techno is relatively new, so we hope this release is the first of many to come.

Brain Exchange EP is released on don’t 27th of November. Let it take you on a journey. Enjoy.